Daily Liturgy and Scripture

The Kingdom of Jesus really is upside down. So much so, it makes no sense to jockey for position. How can we seek a title of authority when we are trying to serve others? Jesus is our teacher, and God is our Father. It’s a wild reorganization and defies our own logic, but we have the Spirit to guide us.

Jesus uses the illustration of a story to show that God has invited people other than the religious elites into the new Kingdom, and the religious elites respond by ENTIRELY missing the point, pivoting to ask him if people will even be married in the afterlife. That's pretty classic play when someone is confronted. Be sure that if you're changing the subject, it's not because you're guilty of missing the real point!

It's fascinating that the religious leaders could condemn neither Jesus nor John because the people held both of them as prophets. Of course, Jesus also held the people in higher esteem than those leaders: he said the leaders would enter the Kingdom after some of the rabble that the religious considered outsiders. He was setting a new standard to enter a new place, and the rules all centered on him.

The significance of Jesus riding on a donkey (in both the Old and New Testament passages today!) should not be missed. In Jesus's day, victors rode into town on the largest horse they could find. It was a symbol of their bigness over the smallness of those they had conquered. Jesus went the other way, riding a young donkey. It was almost absurd. It was also a sign of how the Kingdom of Jesus is different: we need not destroy others, we instead need to serve others.

It seems that nobody fully understand the darkness that is descending upon Jesus's light. His sacrifice isn't metaphorical or figurative, but it's really going to happen to him. Ever after he says this, James and John are recommended for high positions to Jesus by their mother. Surely, someone who understood where Jesus was heading wouldn't have requested this. Be patient with them, though. They will come to understand, and sometimes we are just as slow.

The word "fair" isn't exactly part of God's vocabulary. If God handed out what we deserve, none of us would be left standing. Instead, God gives grace to all who will come, and that is an amount set by God's judgement. If we start trying to figure out whether or not we think it's fair, we're certainly putting ourselves on the wrong side if the judge's chair.

In Jesus' time, women didn't have a lot of power. The need to hold families together was not only preserving marriages, but preserving the livelihood of women. He points that out with the "hard heart" condition given for divorces-- it was not because God wanted things to be that way. This was particularly poignant because he was talking to a group of men in power, testing him. 

To make a radically different community like the Kingdom of Jesus, members of that community have to be diligent at keeping unity. When things are done to harm other members of that community, the community takes action to make them whole. All along, each of us must remember that we have all been forgiven much, and forgiveness is essential to be passed along as part of our bond in the Spirit. 

Becoming like a little child may take some work. It doesn’t mean gaining power and notoriety, but being vulnerable and powerless. This is what children were in Jesus’ time, and it was what he challenged his disciples to be on many occasions. Children also need to depend on their parents for all their needs, and so also did Jesus want to teach that we must depend on God.

Jesus being present with Moses and Elijah is a pretty big deal. Moses represents the law, and Elijah represents the prophets. These were huge pillars in the Jewish world. But then they are gone, leaving only Jesus. He didn't dissolve the other two, so that they no longer exist. They were his predecessors, just as John the Baptist was as well. Jesus didn't destroy any of that, but fulfilled them both and gave them life.